


Three Little Words

by Ark



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Mind Control, Sex, Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-07
Updated: 2012-02-07
Packaged: 2017-10-30 18:51:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,171
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/334949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ark/pseuds/Ark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You always hurt the one you love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three Little Words

Alaric calls at 2am when the bar's closing or closing him out at least. Texts, rather. Nothing but the address.

It's an hour or more outside of Mystic Falls in a real backwater's backwater but Damon makes it before three. Doesn't say anything, just collects Alaric from where he is at the side of the bar. Hauls him into a fireman's hold and they leave without any interaction with the few straggling rednecks.

In the parking lot Alaric lists against Damon's shoulder as they walk. Damon passes Alaric's car and angles him into the front seat of his own, which has the door already swung open and waiting to receive him. Alaric's head slumps against plush leather. It feels better than the rough wood surface of the bar.

“Everyone I like tries to kill me at some point,” Alaric informs Damon's tousled head while Damon belts him in. “What's the deal with that?”

Damon slams the door shut and for long seconds Alaric is engulfed in darkness until Damon is climbing into the driver's seat beside him. Dim light glows in the car as Damon starts it.

“This is the fourth time this month, Ric,” he says, attempting to change the subject. They sit with the engine purring in the parking lot. “I'm not trying to sound all judgey, I just wish you would pick classier places to get messed up. You're going to get the wrong end of a knife one of these nights.”

Damon flinches, tries to draw that back, but it's too late. Alaric snorts. “Enough of that in Mystic Falls,” he points out, “When I'm just minding my own fuckin' business. In my own...” He snorts again, ungracefully, at the absurdity of it all, the total absurdity that is his life. “...in the family home of my magical student whose dead aunt I sort of dated. Where I live to protect her and things attack us. And everyone I love dies or tries to kill me or both.”

“Elena _is_ magic,” Damon agrees, deadpan, smoothly steering the car out of the lot and onto the godforsaken dirt road that led to it. He ignores the rest again. “What'll it be, man? We can stop at the strip club on the highway if you're not done poisoning your non-rejuvenating liver yet. It'll still be open. Or we can continue that pursuit in the library. Got a bottle of Parker's Heritage with our names on it --”

Alaric slants a look at Damon sideways. He's a little dizzy and a little keeled over so it feels more like looking diagonal. Won't let it drop. “You like me,” he interrupts. “And sure, you try to kill me sometimes and sometimes do, but you're the only person I like who likes me who doesn't die.”

“Already dead,” Damon returns helpfully, speeding up once they've rolled onto paved roads. He never misses an opportunity to drive fast. 

Alaric watches scenery go past glass too quickly. He presses the button for the window, letting in the swamp-warm Virginia night air, needing it. The breeze catches in their hair. 

He's focused on not being sick all over Damon's fancy upholstery so he keeps talking, eyes fixed on a point in the distance. Even his ironclad drinking stomach has its limits when met with the house bottles at a roadside pit. “I mean it though. You're the only one who doesn't leave. And also you come to get me when I...”

“When you're being self-pitying and self-indulgent and stupid.” Damon doesn't say it cruelly; his eyes stay on the drive but he's smiling. “I wrote the book on that. It's not a problem. I'm nocturnal, you know. I appreciate these little adventures of 'Where's Ric Trashed?' Sometimes you forget to send the full address and I get a text with something like '52 hog.' It's quite the scavenger hunt.”

Alaric watches a square sign for a park-and-view turn-off go past in the dark, illuminated letters flashing. “Can you pull over there?” he manages.

Damon aims a quick concerned look for Alaric and the upholstery both. “Shit. I'll slow down now so you can--”

“No.” Alaric makes his hand make an approximation of a dismissive gesture. His waving fingers blur into multiples of fingers. “Not that. I'm okay. I just think that maybe you should fuck me out here since the boarding house is far away and I really want you to fuck me.”

The car keeps a perfect line on the road but this time Damon looks over longer. One darkly curved eyebrow jacks up. “What were they _feeding_ you back there, Ric? I haven't seen you this far gone since Liz's homebrewed absinthe.”

“Damon,” says Alaric, striving for the seeming clarity he could still often affect when drunk, “I've had a piss-poor day and a week from hell, a month from it maybe. I'm sick of being in my fuckin' head and when you're sarcastic and accommodating instead of being sarcastic and a bastard sometimes that's our best sex ever.”

“Is it,” from Damon, with more curious consideration than questioning, like he's thinking about it. Alaric can see from the set of his shoulders that every inch of him is amused. And interested. He's already changed lanes so that they can make the rest-stop exit. 

“I think you like snapping me out of being like this,” Alaric says. “I'm not much use to you when I fuck off and feel bad for myself. That's why you come get me.”

“No,” says Damon, blue gaze back on the road. “I do that because I'm in love with you, you complete dick.”

It's perhaps the least romantic declaration of feelings in the history of such protestations and also one of the most profound sentences Alaric Saltzman has heard spoken aloud. Drunken butterflies come to life in his suddenly not-so-ironclad stomach. Then they careen, flapping one-winged. He spends long moments trying to measure out and weigh how much sarcasm had been in the response, if it was just Damon-snark he was having trouble decoding with his cotton-thick inebriated brain.

He's quiet so long, thinking about it, that Damon says, tight: “Don't worry. I'll compel you not to remember I said that. And this. Don't want it getting too weird.” His shoulders lift in a shrug. “Sometimes you just need to hear it even if you forget. Sometimes I need to.”

Alaric splutters with too many words abruptly in his mouth. Fury wars with flattery for control of his vocal chords. “You've said that before and compelled me to forget it?”

Damon's jaw tightens, and it's clear he wishes he hadn't spoken so hastily. “I—once or twice. Once when you were dying and then lived. Once when I was dying and then lived. And -- Ric. I've never compelled you in anything else, I swear. Just made you forget a few little words here and there so I didn't fuck up your life any more than I was already doing.”

“Not your call,” snaps Alaric, still shading on the side of outrage. Still half-choking on words like a drink swallowed down the wrong way. “Ever occur to you, you ass, that I might love you back? That ever figure in when you were fucking with my memories?”

Damon rounds them off into the rest-stop exit, which is a short road that ends in a half-moon space of tall trees and picnic benches. He kills the car and the only illumination is from the glowing dashboard and a few forlorn streetlights by the tables.

They don't say anything. Then Alaric says, “How did I react before? Before you took it away.”

From the drawn expression on his face, this is the last conversation in the solar system Damon is keen on having. But he's trapped in it and in the car, the trees looming over them with reaching branches. He shakes his head and takes his hands from the wheel and the key. 

“When I was dying, you said it too. But I was dying. You were...it was a courtesy to your mad best friend. There was a lot of pain then and I took it back again because I caused it.” That he's thought about this a lot is as evident as his hesitation. Alaric feels profoundly jealous of not being able to share the memory, more deprived now than angry.

“Can you show me?” he asks. Then asking's done with. Why is he requesting to see what's already happened to him? “Show me, Damon. I want to see.” The world is still so topsy-turvy that a trip into his sublimated subconscious doesn't seem all that bizarre. In fact, it seems like the only thing that will get them through this.

Damon is staring straight ahead, his hands at his sides. Alaric hasn't had vervain in ages, not since he'd started letting Damon take the occasional bite when he'd been exceptionally good or on edge or starving. Damon heaves a sigh, rubs his temples, conducts what Alaric knows is a complicated internal debate of loss versus gain. 

Then he turns at the hip and frames Alaric's face in his hands. “Remember,” Damon says, all lit-up eyes. “You asked.” Then he says, “Remember,” with more eye-flare, and

_the thick, cloying smell of decay and death. Damon smelling of soured sweat and werewolf-rotted flesh. Huddled on the filthy ground he wasn't very threatening even if his mind was in as much turmoil as his body._

_Alaric had brought him a final shot of their favorite bourbon. Unbolted the cell door, safety be fucked. Damon took the drink propped up in his arms. Damon so weak for once, so wrongly weak, Alaric's arms too tight around him like they could hold him there with stubbornness alone._

_Since he was dying and didn't care very much anymore about anything save settling scores and didn't have very many periods of lucidity, Damon was blunt. Alaric's forehead was pressed to his and they weren't saying anything for a good while, just holding there._

_Then. Before that saw an end. “Love you, Ric,” Damon had whispered, his bright voice dulled, and Alaric had only opened his eyes wider. “You're the best friend I ever had. Not too shabby in the sack either. It's been a good run, hasn't it?”_

_Alaric had held infinitely tighter instead of pulling away. “We're not fucking letting you die. I'm not.”_

_“And they say that I'm the one slowly turning delusional,” Damon said. His eyes had been too fragile. Then only their mouths had spoken. Damon had tasted like Damon and blood and ashes._

_It had been Alaric in the end who needed the comforting, who needed the saying-goodbye. He'd kept hold of Damon until others had arrived but before he let go he said, near his ear, “I'm already delusional enough as is, Damon. I love you too, you ass, and you're a real dick if you die on me now that you've made me say it. So 'bye until I see you,”_

_and after Katherine had come through with the cure and Damon didn't die he let Alaric remember their mind-blowing gymnastic celebratory sex but not the majority of the exchange on the cellar floor._

Alaric comes out of the scene gasping, tears threatening his eyes like pinpricks. “Damon. Christ.”

“Warned you,” says Damon, lip shaping into a snarl-pout. “That's why you didn't need to--”

“First of all, _never_ fuck with my memories again, not if you ever want to do any other kind of fucking. My cerebrum is off-limits.” Alaric sounds too angry -- he's not, mostly confused -- so he slows down. “Second of all. For fuck's sake, we're _in love_ with each other.”

“It's pretty messed up,” Damon agrees.

“It's fucking insane,” says Alaric, “so of course it makes perfect sense.” He's still pretty blitzed and it does. But seeing what he'd seen had been sobering. He collects his scattered thoughts. “It's not so bad. We've been living with it already, right? Some of us with more lucid memories than others.”

“Not so bad,” Damon allows. 

Then they're tearing into each other with the heady exuberance of its acknowledgment. Alaric has his hands in Damon's hair tugging and he's kissing him hard as the confining seat-belt will allow. He drags Damon's full lower lip out between his teeth. “You'll never learn. I should punish you for meddling but all I can think about is doing damage to the backseat.”

“I meddle,” says Damon. “It's part of why you love me.” 

Now that it's in the open they can't seem to contain it. “Tell me other reasons,” says Damon, and for a brief moment he sounds boyish, less jaded, nearly the youth with a head for romance he was before being turned.

Alaric considers. He considers their usual snark and sarcasm. Then he considers how long it has been since anyone had told Damon that he was loved in return. 

“Oh, lots of things,” says Alaric. They drag themselves over the partition and end up sprawled in the backseat with Damon above him, then making himself comfortable, settling in and settling down. He cocks his head at Alaric. 

“Your mind,” says Alaric, indulgent, pushing and pulling fingers through Damon's raven-dark hair. “Beautiful and wicked and smart. Your mouth. Beautiful and wicked and smart. Your body--”

Damon, lips pleased, eyes aglow, takes the hint. Undoes a long series on buttons on his shirt and pushes free of it. There's no undershirt beneath, only cool sculpted flesh, honed muscular perfection and strength that could rip Alaric in half. Damon stretches lazily instead of ripping anything apart, straddles him looking like a wandered-off museum statue.

Alaric touches him everywhere. The revealed rise of his collarbone. The soft space were his jaw meets his ear. Abs that are the envy of washboards everywhere. The pointed turn of his elbow. Damon's hard readiness pressing his pants' fabric between them. Alaric touches there, too, lingers.

“Your cock,” he says. “I love your cock. Beautiful, and wicked, and--”

A whoosh of vampire-fulled air and movement and Alaric feels his own shirt ripped free, his pants unzipped and shoved away. Damon naked too and moving with more purpose now between his legs. “More things,” Damon demands, and Alaric laughs.

He stops laughing when Damon pushes one long finger into him. Instead he puts his head back hard against the leather armrest and groans too low in his throat and takes a moment to wonder how many people drove around with lube in the glove compartment. Probably more than a few, Alaric concedes, then groans again as Damon adds another slick finger. 

Usually they were in such a hurry to screw that they rushed preparation and didn't draw it out over-long. But it's different with Damon over him tonight in the car. There's an intensity to every traded touch and they can't stop looking at each other like they've grown extra eyes. 

When Damon's up to three fingers -- excessive, but so was his impressive cock -- he keeps them in slow exploration in Alaric, making sure to hit repeatedly at the best spot. Alaric feels his body being twisted into an elongated arc, arching up under Damon. He pants with it, pleasure zig-zagging through him at the whim of Damon's hand. He could come from this alone. Could come from the way Damon's watching his face.

“Love your eyes,” Alaric manages around Damon's fingers. “Everyone does. I love your energy, your willingness to take up any crazy mission, whether it's life or death or dragging my drunk ass from a bar. Your growing martyr complex is troubling but--”

Damon grins as wickedly as Alaric had been describing. His fingers push _just right_ in Alaric. “It's mostly learned from you,” Damon says, completing the thought. “So you can't really complain. You like to see your influence...imprinting on me.”

“Fuck,” says Alaric eloquently. His traitor body is unraveling under Damon, already giving up its best-kept secrets. He's straining so hard he really is going to come from Damon's fingers and talk alone if he keeps it up. He tosses his head in protest. “Just fuck me already and I promise I'll write you up a list of best-loved attributes tomorrow along with the groceries.”

Damon's sly smile stays but he doesn't acquiesce. Instead he leans in and down and spends a long time pressing kisses and small bites just enough to hurt but not break the skin along Alaric's neck. He leaves impressions of his teeth and then intricate patterns everywhere else he can reach. 

His fingers won't cease their movement and the doubled attention has Alaric dizzier than the liquor. Damon's free hand teases, then twists at Alaric's flat nipples: first one, then the other, until Alaric grinds out a curse and Damon soothes the raw flesh with a gentler tongue.

On and on and Damon won't fuck him. He grabs their ready cocks and squeezes them together, lets Alaric feel their silken rubbed friction. He ducks to catch Alaric's hungry mouth, Alaric's pleading mouth and supplicant tongue, since nothing else is working. But Damon just kisses him like it's new and rare and not something they've done hundreds of times. Hundreds of times like this, their lips locked, their bodies screaming in unison.

Alaric rakes fingernails down the planes of Damon's back, a move always certain to elicit a shudder, and it doesn't fail him now. He does it again and again until Damon breaks from kissing him.

“Tell me,” he murmurs, his lips hovering over Alaric's, sometimes touching, then away.

“Want you to fuck me,” says Alaric, game. “I've been saying it all night. I'll draw you a diagram if that helps.”

“Tell me again,” says Damon, slowly freeing his fingers. He pushes Alaric's thighs further apart and starts to position himself between them. He breaches Alaric with the thick head of his cock, but only a little.

Alaric moans now without attention to volume control. “God,” he pants, scrabbling at Damon, trying to guide him closer. 

“Damon'll do,” Damon smirk-says.

“Fuck me,” says Alaric with exasperation. “I love you, _Damon_ , you psychotic vampire bastard, okay?” Then Damon pushes into him at the same time his lips crush Alaric's, and with so much preparation Alaric takes all of him at once. Then both of them are groaning.

After showing such restraint Damon is keen to abandon it. He puts pale hands that are not quite gentle to Alaric's hipbones to hold him down and moves inside Alaric with repeating purpose. He is thorough and deep and then that again. Every thrust brings them closer and there are a lot of them. 

Damon has specialized in sex for many of his impossible years and it was always good, is always so fucking good, but this time's even better. Alaric doesn't know what his own face looks like, only knows that he's loose-jawed and sex-eyed, dazed at how much he wants and is wanted. They fucking _loved_ each other. And it wasn't even the first time they'd said it. Alaric knows he should be angrier but he can't be, not right now, not yet.

Nothing else in the world right now except them in Damon's cramped backseat. The dark deserted rest-stop with its lonely tables, the cars going by on the farther road. Mystic Falls is even farther. There's nothing here but them. Nothing exists except the way they slide and scratch and kiss and strive together. Nothing else to see here.

Even after all of it Damon takes his time making Alaric come. He closes a hand in a too-gentle ring around the base of Alaric's cock, only tightening his speeding grip when his hips can match it. He holds back a little so that he can watch Alaric's face as he thrusts with the perfect rhythm to unlock him. 

Alaric is pulled apart and comes apart under Damon, saying Damon's name. Then he says it again, since Damon won't stop, can't stop, so long as Alaric's saying it, like the best kind of magic spell. Damon only drives deeper, takes him harder, even as Alaric's coming between their sweat-soaked fucking and saying “Damon,” and “Damon.”

He doesn't stop until there's no more air and sound left in Alaric's lungs, though his lips still mouth the name. Then Damon puts his forehead to Alaric's and there's too much salty sweat and their eyes blink wet with it their eyes claim and he comes as deep in Alaric as Alaric will have him. They breathe through the aftershocks with bodies joined and try to stay that way as long as their bodies let them.

Alaric has mostly pulled on his pants and regained his shirt by the time he can speak again. 

“Glad we got that cleared up,” he says. Not much can be said beyond that and 'holy Christ' and he'd already voiced that one. 

Damon is being too quiet. Had been since coming, which usually gave him a jolt of energy and unstoppered his gift for gab. His eyes had avoided Alaric while they dressed. If it hadn't been for the way he'd looked and the way Alaric had known it had felt he would have been put-off.

So Damon is a little weirded out by their considerably weird night. Fine. Alaric does up his belt and checks for his wallet. Give him some time and the drive back and they'd be okay, they always were.

At vampire speed, Damon moves too quickly to be believed. He crushes Alaric against the door of the car with a forearm across his throat to keep him in place. Pins him in a different sort of push than moments before.

He doesn't let Alaric speak but if he did Alaric would say _Don't_. His eyes shriek it.

Instinctively, Alaric fights back, and then he struggles. His hands come out of his pockets, balling fists that do no damage. Damon's press on his windpipe is too tight but at least it only lasts a gagging second. Then his eyes flare and Alaric stills. Stops kicking. Stares.

Damon lets go. Bites his lip, hard, looks away. Makes a small sound like something torn between a keen and a snarl for his ears only. Takes too long looking at Alaric staring vacantly back at him. 

Then he says, moving back into the gaze, “I'm sorry, Ric. I am. You have to forget some of this for me now. The best part. God,” says Damon, nearly breaking the compulsion as he reaches to trace Alaric's jawline with his thumb. “I really am sorry. But this isn't safe territory. Not yet.” It's the first time he's ever really apologized to Alaric's face and all Alaric can do is stare in return. “Just...just remember that you were drunk as fuck and we had a fantastic fuck at the rest-stop and everything's cool. For...forget what we said.”

Damon turns his head to the side, and Alaric comes alive and smiling underneath him. “Man, what a _ride_. You don't kid around.” His body is relaxed and his expression easy. He smooths back his bedhead hair with one hand. “Shit, I need to stop drinking so much because my brain wants to kill me but...fuck, Damon. That was fantastic.”

Damon is moving away, out the door and back to the driver's seat. Alaric climbs over the way they came. This time he buckles his own seat-belt. 

Damon watches him do it. “Feeling's mutual,” he says, with his favorite half-cocked half-smile. “Next time maybe find a place people actually want to drink at and I'll come with you for that part too.”

“Right,” says Alaric as the car rumbles to life and swings out onto the road. “I'll look for safer territory.” 

Damon blinks at him, then is distracted by turning them towards the main thoroughfares. It's almost light out now and the traffic is heavier.

“We good, Ric?” Damon asks, still working the gas pedal too gleefully.

“Yeah, everything's cool,” answers Alaric. They find the main highway and are soon speeding back to Mystic Falls with the windows down and the breeze in their hair.

Alaric's hand is clenched in his pants' pocket. It has been a fist now for so long it feels frozen that way. 

Underneath his wallet and next to the change and the wintergreen gum was the vervain bracelet that was there because Alaric Saltzman was many things, but he had tired of being anybody's fool. 

Only now the bracelet is in his hand, gripped so fiercely that he can feel the stamp of the beads biting into his flesh. It had moved into his reach a half-second before Damon had moved for him and stayed there. 

In the front seat, he sits and watches the sun crawl up and trades nonsense barbs and listens to Damon talk about nothing. 

In his pocket, Alaric's hand is shaking, holding the vervain links too tight, as tight as he'd held to his free will. It burns against his skin like he's a vampire.

**Author's Note:**

>  _You always break the kindest heart  
>  With a hasty word you can't recall.  
> So if I broke your heart last night  
> It's because I love you most of all._  
>    
> "You Always Hurt The One You Love" (1944) lyrics by Allan Roberts & Doris Fisher


End file.
